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‘It Was Unprecedented’: Retired Border Patrol Chief Blows Whistle On How Biden Admin Hid Migrant Crisis

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jason Hopkins

 

“There was a gag order put on us literally within minutes of the Biden administration taking office”

Retired Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott blew the whistle to the Daily Caller News Foundation on how the Biden-Harris administration allegedly went to great lengths to hide the immigration crisis from the public, just days after a sector chief made similar claims.

Aaron Heitke, a former chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector, testified before a House committee on Sept. 18 and claimed that the White House ordered agents to hide information on arrests of special interest aliens (SIAs), move masses of illegal migrants out of sight of the press and give other instructions to disguise the true level of the border crisis. Scott, who led Border Patrol from roughly the last year of the Trump administration to the first seven months of the Biden administration, told the DCNF he was given similar orders.

“There was a gag order put on us literally within minutes of the Biden administration taking office,” Scott told the DCNF.

“The chief of staff for Customs and Border Protection, when she arrived, one of her first orders was to forbid us from talking to the public, or doing press releases, or doing media without the White House clearing our statements,” Scott continued. “Not only were they not cleared, when they finally did give us talking points, they weren’t even accurate. They weren’t truthful.”

Scott’s tenure as Border Patrol leader overlapped with Vice President Kamala Harris’ assignment to address the root causes of illegal immigration from Central America. The retired chief confirmed to the DCNF that Harris never once spoke to him, even after her designation as “border czar.”

Having worked in Border Patrol since the early 1990s, Scott has experienced multiple changes in the administration. The longtime officer said higher-ups clamping down on communication to the public was nothing new, but the sheer level of control handed down by the Biden-Harris administration was nothing he had experienced before.

“No press conferences were approved, all border tours were shut down,” Scott said. “It was unprecedented. I’ve never seen a gag order that tight.”

Scott’s comments to the DCNF follow the testimony given by Heitke, where the former San Diego sector chief agent said he was prohibited from talking about the rising number of SIAs — migrants who potentially pose a national security risk to the U.S. — unlawfully crossing the border.

“Prior to this administration, the San Diego sector averaged 10–15 SIAs per year,” Heitke told the House Homeland Committee. “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, way over 100 SIAs in 2023 and more than that this year.”

“These are only the ones we caught. At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIAs or mention any of the arrests,” he continued. “The administration was trying to convince the public that there was no threat at the border.”

Heitke also went into detail about the alleged steps the Biden-Harris administration would take to hide masses of migrants from reporters, accusing the White House of portraying “fiction” to the public.

“Each time we asked for help in dealing with a new issue, it fell on deaf ears,” Heitke said. “At times in San Diego, we had 2,000 or more aliens sitting in between the fences asking to turn themselves in. I was told to move them out of sight of the media.”

This is not the first time agents have accused the Biden-Harris administration of intentionally trying to cover up the extent of the border crisis from the media. Ahead of Harris’ first trip to the border in El Paso, Texas, in 2021, administration officials gave explicit instructions to clear the area of migrants in order to put on a “show” for the vice president, according to Border Patrol sources who spoke to the New York Post.

While an executive order issued by President Joe Biden in June led to a steady decline in illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, his administration had overseen a major wave of illegal immigration into the country after issuing a slate of executive orders that largely dismantled the Trump administration’s border agenda.

Border Patrol agents have encountered more than seven million migrants illegally crossing into the U.S. since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The massive wave of illegal migration has strained the resources of major sanctuary cities such as New York City and Chicago, but also smaller towns in the country’s heartland such as Springfield, Ohio.

Scott commended his former colleague for speaking out, noting that doing so puts his ability to make an income at risk. Many retired agents don’t speak out because companies and other private contractors that work with the federal government want to avoid the publicity that can come with working with or hiring whistleblowers, according to the retired Border Patrol chief.

“I think it’s very problematic that the administration is trying to hide so much relevant information from the public,” Scott said. “I’m very, very grateful that Chief Heitke stepped up and decided to share that information with the public because that really hurts his ability to get contract jobs in the future.”

“[Heitke is] not only taking a risk, he’s knowingly cutting his family’s income by standing up for what’s right,” he continued.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

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Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Resets The Energy Policy Playing Field

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Make no mistake about it, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) signed into law on Friday by President Donald Trump falls neatly in line with the Trump energy and climate agenda. Despite complaints by critics of the deal that Majority Leader John Thune struck with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to soften the bill’s effort to end wind and solar subsidies from the Orwellian 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the OBBBA continues – indeed, accelerates – the Trumpian energy revolution.

Leaders in the oil and gas industry, hamstrung at every opportunity by the Biden presidency, hailed the bill as a chance to move back into some semblance of boom times. Tim Stewart, President of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told his members in a memo that, “For the oil and gas industry, the bill…signals a transformative opportunity to enhance domestic production.”

API CEO Mike Sommers also praised the OBBBA as a positive step for his members: “This historic legislation will help usher in a new era of energy dominance by unlocking opportunities for investment, opening lease sales and expanding access to oil and natural gas development.

While leaders of organizations like those must curb their enthusiasm to some extent in their public statements, they and their peers must be somewhat amazed at how much real substantive change the thin GOP majorities shepherded by Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson managed to stuff into this bill. This industry, historically an easily demonized bogeyman for Democrats and too often ignored by previous Republican presidents, does not experience days as encouraging as July 3 was in the nation’s capital.

Even so, many Republicans, especially in the House, remained unsatisfied by amendments the Senate made to the bill related to IRA subsidy rollbacks. To help Speaker Johnson hold the party’s narrow House majority together, President Trump committed the executive branch to strict enforcement of the new limitations, and promised the White House will work with congressional allies to move a major deregulation package ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

But the OBBBA as passed is chock full of energy and environment-related provisions. FTI Consulting, a business consultancy with a major presence in Washington, DC, published a quick analysis Thursday that projects natural gas and nuclear as the biggest winners as the OBBBA’s impacts begin to take hold across the United States. Interestingly, the analysis also projects battery storage to expand more rapidly over the next five years even as wind and solar suffer from the phasing-out of their IRA subsidies.

The side deal struck by Thune and Murkowski is likely to result in significant new investment into wind and solar facilities as developers strive to get as many projects on the books as possible to meet the “commenced construction” requirement by the July 4, 2026 deadline. The bill’s previous language would have required projects to be placed into service by that time. But even that softer requirement will almost certainly cause a flow of capital investment out of wind and solar once that deadline passes, given the reality that many of their projects are not sustainable without constant flows of government subsidies.

What it all means is that the OBBBA, combined with all the administration’s prior moves to radically shift the direction of federal energy and climate policy away from intermittent energy and electric vehicles back to traditional forms of power generation and internal combustion cars, effectively reset the policy playing field back to 2019, prior to the COVID pandemic. That was a time when America had become as energy independent as it had been in well over half a century and was approaching the “Energy Dominance” position so dear to President Trump’s heart.

Trump’s signing of the OBBBA gives the oil and gas, nuclear, and even the coal industry a chance at a do over. It is an opportunity that comes with great pressure, both from government and the public, to perform. That means rapid expansion in gas power generation unseen in 20 years, rapid development of next generation nuclear, and even a probable chance to permit and build new coal capacity in the near future.

Second chances like this do not come around often. If these great industries fail to grab this brass ring and run with it, it may never come around again. Let’s go, folks.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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‘They Don’t Know What The F*ck They’re Doing’: Trump Unloads On Iran, Israel

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Harold Hutchison

President Donald Trump expressed frustration Tuesday after Iran broke a ceasefire, prompting retaliation from Israel during a gaggle with reporters on the White House lawn.

Trump announced the ceasefire Monday, saying it was supposed to take effect at 1 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, but Iran fired missiles at Israel Tuesday. Trump vented, saying the countries had been “fighting so long” they couldn’t make peace.

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“You know, when I say okay, now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out in the first hour just drop everything you have on them,” Trump said. “So I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either. But I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because the one rocket that didn’t land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn’t land, I’m not happy about that.”

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard, that they don’t know what the fuck they are doing,” Trump added.

The United States struck facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan related to Iran’s effort to develop nuclear weapons early Sunday morning local time, using as many as 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators in the operation, which involved a 37-hour flight by seven B-2A Spirit bombers.

The American strikes came ten days after Israel launched a military operation targeting the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has responded with repeated missile attacks on Israeli cities and a refusal to resume negotiations over its efforts to pursue nuclear weapons.

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